Shattered Cycle
by Draco Umbrae Ignium
Summary: Picking up where the third game left off after getting the perfect ending, I wanted to write something using my Shepard as I played him. I intend to keep original characters to a minimum, throwing them in only as necessary. All due gratitude, respect, and acknowledgement to BioWare, EA Games, and the talented creative teams behind the games I love. Also, it's a working title...
1. Breath Out of Hell

Darkness. Cold, numb, empty, abyssal blackness engulfed his sight, consumed him and left him hanging in tranquil, eternal nothing. Thought was meaningless and dead. Questions flitted away into the ethereal void wrapping about him. They should have been asked, should have mattered to him as he floated there, but their weight stood for nothing here beyond oblivion itself. Memories drifted away unheeded until their light flickered and died before blind eyes could even grasp their brief presence. The quickest moment passed in which he contemplated speech, in silence judged too frivolous to be of value, and it too faded and died. There was nothing here. Nothing but the dark, the black, deeper than the most gloom-laden distances of space where light goes to die.

A sharp stab of agony pierced the miasma to bring fiery, searing pain, a gasping breath of spiteful defiance that blistered lungs screaming in objection. A spark of errant electricity, a quick surge of reviving power to force thick, dust strewn air into a body that didn't want it. To this he woke slowly, consciousness creeping back as if in dread, an arduous, miserable crawl from blessed nihility into the suffering of waking life that set his nerves alight with fire, blood pounding through begrudging veins at the whim of a heart not yet ready to rest. His body, battered, broken, dripping with tormented pain and smeared with coagulated blood, fought both to move and remain still, a battle won by a man without the concept of defeat in his mind. He twisted, hearing bones crackle and pop beneath marred flesh, barely able to bear the agony enough to pull himself to his hands and knees.

Where?

Awareness slowly began to seep into the murky haze he had been lost in, forced to fight through the pounding headache throbbing malignance through his skull and the dizziness that set the world around him tumbling in a blur. He wasn't dead. He couldn't conceive of why, but he had survived a calamitous nightmare that no human should wake from, a fact he had yet to grasp. All that he could beckon to his thoughts was the need to know where he was. A bleary eye swiveled about as a heavy head turned this way and that, trying desperately to glean some solidity of his surroundings.

Concrete. Wasteland. Ash. Dust. Ruin.

He had failed, then. They were here. They had annihilated Earth, consumed its people, and left a barren desolation as testament to the hubris of man. Why was he awake? Had they forgotten him? He crawled, painful though it was, on bleeding hands that felt their way through rubble in futile hope of learning their fate. When would they be back?

The ground turned soft and moist beneath his fingers, his sight drooping down to find them sinking into but one of the countless corpses left in the wake of this war. He moved on. He'd seen enough dead in his years, and at the moment, more pressing concerns played through his still dull thoughts. He dragged himself up. He was alive, he was breathing, he felt the implants throughout his body that hadn't fried whirring and pulling his tissues back in line. He wouldn't crawl like an animal into the waiting maw of an enemy. Finally steadied on his feet, a success rewarded with a crippling shock of pain to tell him that his leg was broken, probably in more than one place, he balanced most of his weight on the foot that brought the lesser gout of pain. His sight turned upward to see a black sky of ruinous cloud hanging low over the expanse of destruction, flashes of lightning crackling through the black swirls of ashen smog, a downpour of fire across the bleak immensity lending further to the apocalyptic vision.

Earth. He was on Earth. That couldn't be, though. It couldn't...

He felt a weight in his hand, overlooked in the deathly fog he had been in, and curiosity beckoned the limb to his vision. A pistol, clung by scabbed fingers, helped bring him back around more. Gunshots. The echo of their memory rang in his head, and each served him with a brief flash of memory, pieces that began to assemble into something less mutable than the fetid swamp they had been before. Fire... Explosions of glass and metal... A decision made with a face behind each shot fired... An enemy that could not be beaten.

Reapers.

Panic brought his arm up and sent a jolt through his finger, followed by another, then another, each erupting with another blast from the pistol's barrel, eyes locked on a figure that he could only just make out. Half a thermal clip quickly shot off in succession preceded a lucid awareness of nothing but a shadow lurking before him, a ghost of horrible memories returning to take their toll on his psyche. It was nothing. His gun arm dropped to his side again, though the fingers refused to relinquish the relic tying him to these dawning recollections. Eyes widened, lips moved, vocal chords strained and refused, words catching silently in his throat before finally croaking out the third time.

"Kaidan..."

Where was he? His heart rapidly ebbed into an erratic pulse in his chest, adrenaline like liquid flame in his veins as the dread overcame him. He remembered being with him as they ran, no, charged onward. Breathing heavy, he sought his comrade in the wreckage of twisted metal and devastated concrete around him. No. He had died. They got him. Anger rose in him again, a fury checked only by a body without the might to fuel it. Wait... He remembered... Kaidan had evacuated. He was alive. Injured, but alive, unless...

His vision drifted upwared and fell upon a megalithic, towering shape looming before him, and a deluge of horror brought about a new clarity, thankfully with enough speed that he realized the truth of the smoke shrouded shape. Laying there, perhaps only ten meters away, was one of their destroyers. Dropped on its side, lifeless, the massive Reaper was little more than a poignant reminder of the threat that had shaped his life for years now. And he remembered.

They were destroyed.

Relief washed over his pain-wracked body in a palpable wave that finally let him sink to his knees again, planting him on the cracked pavement. All of the anger, the trauma, the sorrow, and the loss, painted in vicious strokes of blood and carnage over the past three years, held together by necessity and a ruthlessness born of war, boiled within him. Emotions long kept in check unraveled within him. Regret for every failure, for every needless death, for every call he had to make that cost another life, churned with the rage he hadn't been able to escape since the whole mess began, melded with the resentment toward ever son of a bitch that heaped all of this responsibility on his shoulders in the first place. Swelling with the sadness of those he had lost, those he respected with every ounce of his being for everything they were, and bonding with the sudden, liberating realization that it was all over...

In that dead silence of an obliterated Earth, a silence made more potent by the haunting, droning lament of sighing wind, Shepard screamed. A howl resonated from the pit of his stomach and surged forth to drag every buried emotion from its grave, his roar pierced the emptiness around him and trembled through every dark inch of the galaxy, a sound of fury through misery, of triumph bought with pain at too high a price, of victory that tasted of blood and sweat. In that moment, every conqueror in human history cried with him, every thunderous wardrum beat upon a field of battle boomed their powerful tones. In that moment, the deluge loosed from within his heart melted him and trumpeted a defiant achievement into the furthest reaches of oblivion.

Fingers finally released the pistol he had been so reluctant to let go of, the weapon clattering to the ground beside him, and he heaved breath after succulent breath, alive without the remotest concept how, nor the faintest desire to care. He crumbled to the side, giving in, at long last, to the pain of his wounds with a smile on his lips. He hadn't failed. He won.

Darkness shattered with brilliant light like the unfolding of angelic wings that would have sent pain ripping through his head had there not already been plenty there. His eye squinted and strained, and only now did he realize that his sight was so limited. The hum of shuttle engines, a familiar, beloved sound in this purgatorial battleground, reached his ears in a muffled pulse. Voices pried behind the hiss of jets, and with a final struggle to catch a glimpse of the craft, Shepard forsook himself back into consecrated obliviousness, well comforted in the image of an Alliance crest emblazoned upon the hull of his savior.

On wings of light beneath an ashen sky and a tempest of flames, Commander Shepard, the hero of an eon, was brought from despair into a galaxy waiting breathlessly to adore him.


	2. The Cost of Victory

"Three major fractures along his right leg, more in his rib cage, arms are a mess, a few cracked vertebrae. Bone weave implant substructure barely intact, probably all that kept every single bone in his body from shattering."

"We'll have to hope that the lattice stays together long enough. There's nothing we can do here."

So tired. Exhaustion laid over Shepard with almost crushing, suffocating weight, so oppressive he almost couldn't move. All he could do was lay there and try to push consciousness through the daze overlaying everything around him. All he could do was trust the soldiers around him and hope for the best.

"God, how is he even still alive? Burns over at least sixty-five percent of his body."

"Get more medi-gel in him. It'll help stop the bleeding and spare the poor man some of the pain."

"Yes sir."

Chaos surrounded him, movement whirring in every direction, so quickly he couldn't begin to hope to cling on to any semblance of stability or understanding. He caught bits of their conversations to try and put together an idea of just how bad off he was.

"What little remains of his left eye is absolutely mangled. Severe trauma to the skull, the socket's almost caved in, but the swelling's contained."

He had lost his eye. At least that was explained now. A dose of medi-gel that would likely break almost every genetic modification law pumped into his body, washing his nerves with anesthetic that saved him from a level of pain that might have finished him off then and there. He barely made out the harsh light of a military vessel glowing against the dull metal structure of a causeway before he finally dropped into unconsciousness, able only because the pain was consumed by the gel. Finally, he rested.

 _"Never before have so many come together from all corners of the galaxy..."_

Trees fenced in a gray, ash-strewn wasteland, above which only hung darkness, the canopy of strangely lit foliage tousling in a lost breeze that carried the dust through the whispering leaves. Roots curled into ruined soil at his feet, black and snaking into the gray soot that almost floated on stray currents of stale air. This was a dream he had had before, a dream he thought he would be free from by now, through the release of either death or victory. Wavering shadows, vague figments with distant voices, surrounded him in nameless, faceless mass. Every death, every failure that had brought him here, every soul lost to a hopeless fight clung desperately to his thoughts, eyeless faces of smoke and bitter remorse leering at him, demanding retribution for the sacrifice of their lives. He looked on helplessly. He tried to speak, to explain, to beg their forgiveness, but words failed him utterly beneath the harsh stares of heartless, hopeless, forlorn souls to whom he owed too much. All he could do was watch beneath the trees.

This was different, though. Embers no longer rained from the overbearing heavens as they had before. The child, whose face had lurked in the depths of every doubt he held too strongly too since Earth was first attacked, shifted into view just behind the mephitic wall of baleful memory that enclosed him, peeking through the wavering humanoid forms of dismal smoke. Damp with tears, his eyes pleaded for salvation from a hero who could not succeed. Alone, fenced in by those victimized by his warpath, Shepard strained against the smog, trying to reach the young, pained face that he had failed through the wall of malice and woe. He had no answers for them. He only wanted to save them...

Lights flickered and dawned here and there in the spectral crowd, dim and fiery, shooting incendiary light through the miasma. He saw them emerge one by one from the points of brilliant deliverance, faces of those he had united, those he had brought together against a single enemy of insurmountable horror: Primarch Victus and his squadrons of turian soldiers strode forth from one, Urdnot Wrex and the dwindling krogan from another, while yet a third heralded Aria T'loak followed by the leaders of the Blue Suns, Eclipse, and the Blood Pack. A fourth shone out, coalescing into the faces of every ex-Cerberus member that defected to their cause, headed by Jacob Taylor and Dr. Brynn Cole. A fifth brought memories of Alliance loyal faces that he had liberated from the numerous planets threatened in the war. A sixth, a seventh, then an eighth, gave way to more than he could see through the dimming distance, and from each strode the images of every single force he had assembled, and their brilliance shone through the throng of imposing darkness in a torrent of absolving light.

Brightest of all, standing just before him as he looked on in stunned, awe-stricken silence, he watched the crew of the SSV Normandy, his comrades, his friends, step forth in heroic glory before him. Those he had grown so close to through the trials of such devastation, those he considered brothers and sisters, dearest companions, stood before him and smiled, every one of them. Pride beamed in their eyes as they looked upon their commander, and the shadows faded behind them. Dead and living, all that once called the Normandy their vessel and Shepard their commander, stood before him in glowing, forgiving effulgence to cleanse away the guilt...

 _"We know the score... We know this is goodbye..."_

Kaidan stood at the forefront, smiling, as those words echoed in the primordial distance. Major Alenko, brother in arms, comrade from the beginning, who had stood beside him through calamitous perdition, who had turned his back in fear and distrust, who had returned heavy with regret and acceptance, now gleamed before him in gentle beckoning, bright brown eyes shimmering admiration and affection. Soldier... Friend... Lover... No commander, no man, could hope for a better companion. That he had been so lucky as to know this man, to turn to him in strife and need, dawned a new peace within him.

 _"Don't leave me behind."_

 _"No matter what happens, know that I love you. Always."_

 _"I love you too..."_

The reverberations of that last moment flooded through that forlorn limbo, sweeping away the manifested memories one by one until all that was left was the aurora of golden light and the lingering vision of Kaidan, following the others into bright dissolution. They were all gone. The shadows, the whispers, the glowing reminders of all who he hadn't failed washing away the vapors of those he had, all gone with the last vestiges of that forlorn moment. The moment he knew he had, at least, saved the man he had grown to love, and the best crew he could have ever begged the fates for.

 _"You did good son. You did good. I'm... Proud of you..."_

The lonesome, empty expanse of dusky waste, shot through with the glorious, resplendent light of daybreak from beyond the towering trees, left him facing the solitary memory of David Anderson, Alliance Admiral and the best damned superior that Shepard had known. Alone through much of his youth, Shepard cultivated a bond with the Admiral that he never had the chance to build with anyone else. The man that pushed him to accomplish so much, who expected the inconceivable from him and knew too well his ruthless determination, his cruel, grim resolve, stood at the very last with him, died by his own hand at the whim of a madman. Beyond every other admirer, every other frothing fan or oblivious fool, no other could have said those words to him with the gravity that Anderson had. No other voice could have carried nearly the weight with such a simple declaration.

He was left alone, then, in the company of only the morning sun surmounting a black horizon. He slumped to the earth below him, kicking up a plume of ash and dust, staring up into the ink that blotted out the sky, and for the first time in this dream, he saw stars. Billions of stars, strewn in broad strokes across a glowing infinity of space despite the dawning sun. The clouds scattered at long last, igniting the heavens with a swath of the Milky Way so vibrant it bound him in magical, beautiful suspension.

"Did you do everything you could?" A voice broke the now tranquil silence. Shepard tore his vision from the majestic cosmos hovering above to lay upon a reflection of himself. Civilian clothes, relaxed, normal looking, an image that he had begun to think had been far too rare. Vibrant green eyes were calm with a smile on pale lips as his own form walked closer, sitting across from him. "Did you accomplish what you had to, whatever the cost?"

"Yes," he finally heard himself retort.

"Then move on. You did the impossible, no matter what price you had to pay, and you saved the galaxy when they walked blindly into their own death." The pale, angular features of his face regarded him with a calloused scrutiny that was, somehow, at peace. "You got the job done."

"But, everyone that died. I could have saved more of them..."

"You could have done a lot. They could have done more. What do possibilities matter now? It's done. For all that died, more survived. So a few had to be sacrificed to save the majority."

"Is that really the way things should be done?"

"It's how it had to be done. It wouldn't have worked any other way, and you know that." The reflection chuckled a bit. Laughter. How long had it bee since he really laughed? "That's why they dumped it on your shoulders. No one else could have done it, because no one else would have been willing to sacrifice."

"Some sacrifices are too great. How can I know that I didn't cross that line?"

"Because you succeeded." So final, so matter of fact, Shepard couldn't find an argument to bolster his misery. Not in the face of the very creed that drove him through this entire, twisted catastrophe. "It was war. People die during war. You can't change that, and you damn well know it. You knew it when you started putting up a fight that no one else would. What matters is that you came out on the other side with so many others."

"You're right," he replied at length, a duration filled with gentle silence.

"No, you're right. Stop doubting that." The image of himself stood up, a hand extended down to him, the very hand offered so many times to others that counted on him. It was strange to be on the other end. He took the help and got to his feet again, staring into his own verdant eyes that shone forth the surety he had almost lost before the end. "They made their choices, just like you did. Don't pay for their decisions."

"But, I led them. They did what they did because I told them to."

"And they followed because they knew no one else had a chance in hell." The doppelganger took a step back, arms crossed over his chest, a challenge on his expression and posture. "Can you honestly tell me that there would be a galaxy left if you hadn't done exactly what you did?"

"Maybe. There could have been other ways."

"Well that's not how it happened. Get up. Move on." With that, the figure turned into the steadily growing light of dawn, silhouetting against the brightness, leaving only a lingering afterthought.

"They're waiting for you."


	3. Caught Up

Palaven.

The fires had been quelled long ago, their dying gasps choking the skies with suffocating smoke and plumes of unbreathable smog, blotting out the vicious light of Trebia that normally blazed down upon the planet. The once verdant world knew almost no inch untouched by ash and destruction in the weeks following the collapse of the Reapers. And yet, despite the extensive devastation to the turian homeworld, a situation that they had never before endured, nothing was amiss. Each of them fell into line, each of them knew their place, and no chaos, even on such a scale as the Reapers, would fracture their stalwart discipline. Their citadels of angular precipices and glinting supremacy were brought low and dragged into ruin. Their cities of rigid metal and gleaming nobility, blades of militaristic strength and pride jutting from their lush world, now lay scattered across the broken landscape, torn and seared by the ruthless struggle so abruptly ended by a lost commander. Yet the ever unshaken turians, truly forged of steel in the scorching radiation of their star, operated with unerring dedication to rebuild their world. Every individual knew and appreciated their duty. Every turian fulfilled their purpose to the whole of their civilization without grievance. It was their way, and any lesser informed eye would be scarcely capable of discerning the military from the citizens. If such a line even truly existed within their society, it was a blurred one with no meaning.

Odd though it was for him to once more set foot on his homeworld after years coasting through the cosmos on a current of worthy purpose, Garrus nonetheless could think of no better course to follow at the end of the war than to return, at long last, and avail himself to the reconstruction of his world. He hadn't really adjusted to the change yet either. In truth, he had long been considered something of a renegade, often deviating from the proper place he belonged in and favoring a certain brashness that evoked no respect among the avian, reptilian people. Turians fell in line, always, without question. The individual meant nothing in the shadow of the many, the whole far outweighing the parts comprising it, and Garrus hadn't found himself quite so eager to click into place as his kin. Now, though, there were concerns far too great to let some rebellious streak get in the way.

"Who are you?' inquired the turian leading the rebuilding efforts in one of the city districts as another approached. "Who sent you?" His mandibles squirmed with restrained irritation as he spoke.

"Garrus Vakarian, of the SSV Normandy," he answered, straightforward and to the point. The commanding turian's eyes widened slightly as he regarded the blue clad renegade, and Garrus had to stifle a bit of a grin.

"Vakarian? I know who you are." For a moment, the turian regarded Garrus with plain admiration and a sense of relief. "But, if you're here, that means that Shepard..." His words trailed off. Garrus' eyes dropped to a nearby pile of rubble, a solemn nod following.

"Presumed dead. We haven't heard anything to the contrary, so it's what we're running with." A humorless chuckle tried to mask just how bothered Garrus was by both the prospect of Shepard being dead, and having no damn answer at all. "Look, I'm here to help if I can, so point me toward something that needs fixing." Anything to occupy him would be welcome, at this point. The turian rounded a storage container that was serving as a makeshift table, sifting through a disheveled pile of datapads until he lifted one between his talons. Eyes flickered over the moving screen for a moment before he stepped again to Garrus, offering him the device.

"A nearby aqueduct was completely collapsed in the attacks. This has the coordinates and the damage report. Getting that pipe clear will be a big step in helping the population in this sector, then we can move on to bigger things." Business. Straightforward. Clinical, detached, and rigid. The turian way. At this point, the vigilante thought it for the best, happily surrendering the trouble in his thoughts for menial labor and dryly stoic communication.

"I'll head that way then. And you are...?"

"Tradius Maleg, Director of PR-895 operations." The turian threw Garrus a salute trained to mindless, habitual perfection. Garrus' curiosity played blatantly over his features, though he refrained from questioning too extensively. Garrus saluted in return, an awkward gesture of respect he had given up a long time ago. This, he had to remind himself, was not the time or place to cause a stir.

"I'll get to it, then." The renegade turned without another word and made for the aqueduct.

Days passed, blessedly empty of any great amount of thought demanded from him as he worked to clear the water system with a troop of about eighteen other turians and three haulers equipped with cranes to pry away the wreckage. He didn't say much, deliberately shooing away the questions with insistent dismissal, sticking to his job without a mind to play into the others' curiosity. He ate, he slept, he worked, and he kept quiet, leaving the rumors to jostle about with the others. The last thing he needed was more attention than he could wave off.

As certain as he was that the peace couldn't last, it was nonetheless a bit of a surprise when the inevitable visit came shortly after Trebia began to creep into the daybroken sky. A precursory knock at his door and the following hum of the mechanism opening the gateway between his chamber and the outside world had Garrus immediately on edge. The though grazed his mind only a moment before the dreaded words were spoken, enough to bring the feeling of defeat washing over him.

"Vakarian, I need to speak with you." The voice was familiar, but the whir of the door closing again and the blip of the locking mechanism activating informed him that this would be a private conversation, a fact that was doing little to put his nerves to rest. He turned to the unanticipated company, brow ridge cocking upward curiously.

"Chellick?" A face he hadn't seen and a voice he hadn't heard in years. Not a particularly unwelcome revelation, though the fact that his early morning visitor was a C-Sec officer had him concerned. What could they want with him?

"Executor Chellick."

No... Not after all this time...

"Charges have been filed against you for desertion, Garrus." The renegade's eyes widened a little, his heart thudding rapidly in his carapace now. "You abandoned your position with C-Sec when you were directly ordered to cease your investigation of Saren."

"I didn't desert anything, Chellick!" he barked, voice crecendoing. "I quit. There's a difference."

"You dropped a datapad on the Executor's desk and walked out. You ran off with the Normandy within the hour. That's not quitting, Garrus. That's desertion." Stern and harsh, cutting, brutal with finality. The Executor had obviously had time to consider his approach to the situation.

"I put in my resignation exactly as I was supposed to."

"You disappeared into the traverse on a quest for vengeance, then you fled to Omega to mow down crime lords." Chellick's eyes narrowed with vicious intensity. "You chose to become a vigilante because you couldn't do things your way with C-Sec."

Garrus couldn't argue. After all that had happened with Saren, he had found himself disgusted with Citadel Security, their unforgiving red tape, and their constricting boundaries. He couldn't accomplish anything with them crushing his work into a fine paste. Instead, he dove into the most crime-ridden station in the galaxy, a veritable pirate haven for all breed of lowlife with a taste for exploitation of the innocent. Never once had he considered that his choice had been detrimental; every shot he fired was aimed for some mercenary scumbag or criminal kingpin. How could that have been wrong?

"Then what happened to my resignation?" he implored. The Executor shook his head with something falling between disappointment and annoyance crossing his demeanor. Something in him hated what had brought him here.

"Mandatory two-week waiting period before approval, Garrus. You know that. Any time an officer resigns, we have to manage any pending cases, reclaim C-Sec property, and handle the paperwork, which the resigning officer must be present for." Chellick sighed with crestfallen loss. "You left before your resignation could be properly tended. You're a deserter, Garrus..." His words trailed off, reluctantly said and coldly removed.

Garrus turned away, eyes dropping to the metal flooring of his small personal chamber. Not once in the years since he left C-Sec had he even considered the possibility that something had gone wrong, and Chellick was right. He knew better. He damn well should have taken the regulations into consideration. But, true to his nature, he threw the rules out the window and dashed off into the galaxy to take down the bad guys. All of them. Somewhere in his mind, he had lodged the idea that no one would come after a hero for this sort of thing, that he was above reproach because he was part of the legendary Normandy crew. Now that it was coming back to bite him in the ass, he wished that, for once, he had followed the rules and stuck to the red tape.

"Why didn't you raise this issue sooner, Executor?" His voice was low with the weight of a beaten soldier.

"Because the galaxy needed you. I put off confronting you so you could stick with Shepard and see the war through to the end. I told C-Sec to stay out of your way and keep their mouths shut. It wasn't the time to throw the law in your face, and it wasn't the time to exile you from the Citadel." Closing the distance, Chellick assumed a stalwart posture, puffing himself up for a demand made of his position that he wasn't keen on following through on. "Now that the war's over, though, I can't put it off anymore." Garrus forced himself to smile over at Chellick, locking eyes with him, scoffing a little.

"How is there still Citadel Security if there's no Citadel?"

"The Citadel itself may be in ruins, and the population was devastated, but it still exists as an entity. The Council is intact, the governing bodies are still present, and our job still has to be done." The Executor huffed a bit of a chuckle himself, trying to dismiss a bit of the tension. "We don't need to be on the station to still be the Citadel."

Garrus hadn't remotely thought that argument would work. In truth, he brought it up more as a curiosity, a wonder at the state of things. For all intents and purposes, the Citadel was as much a political force as a space station, an existence of it's own volition despite the presence of the physical body. The Citadel itself could be dust coasting through Earth's atmosphere and it would still remain in power. With a deep breath of resignation to the consequences of his actions, the vigilante stood upright and met eyes with the Executor.

"I'll go quietly, Chellick."

"Good," the other turian chimed, nodding his approval and breathing out the sheer relief. "I honestly wasn't sure if you would or not."

"I don't blame you. But, I think I've been a fugitive long enough, don't you? Blown up my share of everything, probably a bit of yours, too."

"I'm only here for the desertion, Garrus. I won't ask about your run ins with explosives."

The door unlocked with a quick keystroke from the Executor, and Garrus followed him out to a throng of turian guards armed to the mandibles. He eyed Chellick sidelong, smirking as much as his chitinous face would allow.

"All of this for me? You shouldn't have, Decian, I'm flattered."

The Executor's eyes cut at the renegade with that, but he kept his words bound up in his throat.

"I knew there was a reason I wouldn't have made you Executor," Garrus mused as the company fell in line around him and Chellick, escorting the pair through the rubble strewn street toward a waiting vessel.

"Anyone else wouldn't have been so nice about this mess," Chellick quipped crassly.

"Or they would have let me go for good behavior. I mean, sure, Shepard was the real hero, but I was with him through it all."

"Even heroes have to answer to the law," Chellick chided with cryptic glibness.

"Apparently," grumbled Garrus as he hoisted himself into the ship. The hiss of the airlock closing behind him seethed a finality that he wasn't entirely prepared to face yet. Not that he had a choice. Despite all that he had offered of himself to save the galaxy, the damn book still decided to smack him in the face the first chance it got. Hopefully his father would have spared a moment to be proud of him for not fighting this one. Doubtful, but at the moment, it was all Garrus had going for him.


	4. Pushing Too Hard

The Covenant was nothing short of a whirlwind of chaos bound into the vaguest assumption of order that wasn't fooling anyone. As the Council flagship, a massive asari vessel akin to the Destiny Ascension repurposed to house the most essential Citadel entities, it was stuffed beyond capacity with everything from ambassadors, to panicking volus financial aids, to lingering C-Sec officers. Numerous Spectres had also converged on the Citadel when the agonizingly anticipated broadcast was heard giving the all clear, and while most chose instead to drift nearby within their own ships or find refuge at one of the Lunar bases, a handful found themselves immersed in the sea of bodies cluttering every corridor of the dreadnought.

Lost in the quagmire of bureaucracy and political backwash saturated with media broadcasts and a flood of communication transmissions from across the galaxy, Kaidan felt himself being pulled apart at the seams with almost every waking moment. Still not fully recovered from his close encounter with a capsizing Mako, he was nonetheless up and about, flopping from one bellowing section of the Covenant to another, trying desperately to keep up with the needs of the remaining entities of the Citadel, toying with a balancing act between every conflicted part of him that was likely going to put him in the hospital again. His head hadn't stopped pounding since he got released from the med bay.

Kaidan was still a Spectre. So long as the Council existed, so too would their shadowy right hand, and where their will was needed, a Spectre would follow. The once enigmatic, proud agents of the Council were, however, reduced to glorified messengers more often than not, or a brutally efficient police force where C-Sec failed. Those few fortunate enough to remain in the far reaches of the galaxy on their assignments, whether by the decision of the Council or simply being stranded by the Crucible's cataclysmic energies washing over every star in the galaxy, would never really know just how lucky they had been.

Conflict grew more common as irritation, compressed in the hull of a ship on the brink of rupturing, grated against already frazzled nerves, and many times, it had to be a Spectre that broke it up. They were guards now. They were secretaries, and councilors, and mail men from time to time, the oddly mundane now being entrusted to the most elite of agents. The cause, of course, was the Council's need to have their hands on everything aboard the dreadnought-turned-refuge. Whether to maintain a guise of control among the populace and placate them into maintaining the Council's superiority, or for genuine cause that had been lost in the tide of bodies, none were more than half certain.

Add to that the mounting frustrations of Citadel Security at their increasing redundancy in the presence of Spectres on the ship, and the tension was often palpable on the Covenant. Tasks that would normally have called only for C-Sec involvement now instead beckoned the elite Spectres to handle them, leaving the security officers as glorified sidekicks more often than not, a fact that embittered them even more so than before. None could deny the effectiveness of the Council's decision to utilize the Spectres as they were, but few could claim to be happy of the choice.

At the moment, Kaidan was navigating through the communications hub of the Covenant on the third level, just below the flight deck and the war room, repurposed as the Council's chambers. He maneuvered through the always bustling center a bit clumsily, pressing his fingers into his temples, trying to goad the oncoming migraine into at least holding off for another hour or two. A salarian, his wide eyes bouncing about the four screens glowing in front of him, flat face crossed with frustration, didn't notice the approaching human in his frantic pace.

"Have we regained contact with Oma Ker yet?" the marine inquired, forcing his husky voice to an uncomfortable volume to try and contend with the clamor around him. The salarian, however, continued chattering rapidly. Kaidan couldn't tell if he was talking to himself, someone on the other end of a comm buoy, or a bit of both.

"Hey, Telmonik!" Kaidan pushed closer, voice breaking above the wash of background noise, startling the flustered Salarian.

"What?! I don't have time for -"

"Have we reestablished a connection with Oma Ker?" the Spectre interrupted. Telmonik blinked up at Kaidan for a moment, fully assimilating who he was talking to after a brief pause.

"No, we haven't," Telmonik bit, eyes narrowing slightly at the human before he returned to the screens flickering in constant motion before him. Kaidan crushed his teeth together in his skull, which he immediately regretted as a new spike of pain stabbed through his head. This is how it had been ever since he gotten directed to the Covenant after being cleared for release by the Alliance med team; despite his position, few of any species that wasn't human offered much respect to him, the only human Spectre remaining. True, each race was somewhat instinctively closing in on itself, folding into a pseudo-tribalism that had each species treating the others with guarded angst on the best day. Kaidan, utterly dismissed by the salarian, returned to the current of bodies, irritated at this kind of treatment and the headache pounding ever more violently in his head.

"No, we haven't gotten in touch with Oma Ker, Councilor," he reported through his earpiece, trying to keep his annoyance from filtering into his voice.

"Thank you, Alenko," came the detached reply from Quentius, the turian councilor. While the other two held a bit of an edge toward Kaidan, Quentius remained largely neutral, fixing to the ideal that cooperation was the best means to pull the Citadel back together. "I believe Councilor Halldorson needed to speak with you again."

 _'Wonderful...'_

"Thanks Councilor. Let me know if you need me for anything else."

"Of course."

So the human councilor wanted to talk to him again. It was the third time today, and frankly, the last two had only agitated him more. First, it was some issue with a damned merchant claiming that an elcor stole something, which turned out to be nothing but a racist trying to stir up trouble with a rival merchant. The second time, he had to go to the docking bay and search a human vessel fresh from Earth and packed with refugees. Councilor Jessica Halldorson was trying far too hard and running herself thin doing so. More haphazard foot traffic, a jam surrounding a volus on his back and a turian calling in a potential emergency, and a cramped elevator ride carried him to the first level.

Couldn't they at least dim the lights a little?

"Good, you're here," came the rushed, panting voice of the rather young politician as Kaidan rounded the first corner from the elevator. "I need your help again, Kaidan." The councilor was a woman of thirty-something years, with a sharply rounded face and prominent cheek bones, shoulder length wintry blond hair tied back, and pale blue eyes. The Norwegian woman held herself with a proper regality, looking every part the political power figure with none of the demeanor.

"Calm down, Councilor." Mostly for his sake, if he was going to be honest with himself. "If it's another loud-mouth human raising a stink about an elcor, have C-Sec handle it. I have to head to Sur'kesh within the next day or so, and the Normandy's not nearly ready yet." He spoke slowly, calmly, and with respect in his tone, keeping well enough in line despite his putting off the woman. Nonetheless, she shook her head a bit emphatically.

"It's nothing like that." Her voice dropped low, furtive and quiet as she leaned in closer. "Members of Cerberus have contacted our office. They're saying they want amnesty in exchange for offering themselves to the rebuilding efforts on Earth." Kaidan's eyes widened incredulously.

"You're kidding, right?" he half-heartedly chuckled.

"I wish. They said that they abandoned their station on Nepheron when the Reapers landed, and they only just got here. They're hiding out on Europa for the time being." Her accent was thick with her failing composure, a clear sign to Kaidan that she had stepped into her role without the slightest inclination what it entailed. The Spectre took a deep breath, nodding, trying to diffuse her panic with a smile and a consoling color to his dusky voice.

"I'll look into it before I go. Take a breather, Councilor. You'll give yourself an aneurysm if you stay this high strung."

"Yes, you're probably right, there's just so much to do, and more keeps piling on top of it." Halldorson pinched the bridge of her nose as she huffed a deep sigh. "I'm in so far over my head, I can't even see the sun anymore."

"You're doing fine, Councilor," Kaidan encouraged, laying a comforting hand on her shoulder. "No one else could handle this kind of stress as well as you have. You stepped into a hell of a mess when you accepted the position as the human councilor. All anyone can ask of you is your best."

"Thank you, Major Alenko," Jessica forced a tentative smile and met his sepia eyes with hers. Ever since he made his way back to the Citadel three weeks after the fall of the Reapers, he had been her strongest support in the face of such overwhelming political adversity, always offering her a kind word to reaffirm that she hadn't failed, or a soft reassurance to steel herself, or a gentle pat of appreciation on the back. Some days, he had been her only positive influence against the deluge of nigh hostility from the other races. He kept her going.

"No problem, Councilor. Did you need anything else?" he asked, keeping the reluctance from his words. She shook her head and gleamed a fuller smile at the Spectre.

"Not right now. I'll be in touch though, and I want to know what happens with Cerberus as soon as you have a report."

"Of course." Kaidan turned and made a brisk pace back toward the elevator, wanting little more than to get to the Normandy and sleep his way to Europa.

"Kaidan?"

Hell, there went that plan. The marine pivoted to see a slowly pursuing councilor, apparently not done with him yet.

"Yes, Councilor?"

"We... Still don't have any word on Shepard." The sadness in her inflection was only semi-genuine, rehearsed, practiced to a passably convincing skill. Kaidan, however, had talked with her enough to pick up the ghost of hope deep beneath the veneer of sobriety. "I'm sorry."

Kaidan was quiet for a moment, eyes drooping to the floor, heavy with the ever present fears always nagging at the back of his head in any brief moment of silence. As if he needed her reminding him that no word on Shepard had been heard for three months now. As if he needed another reminder of his waning assurance that he'd see the commander again, or the poignant hint that she, as much as many, wanted him to move on with his life. Perhaps more honestly, she wanted him to move on with her, and there were others that thought it only proper.

"Thanks, Jessica," he murmured, lament thick in his voice, not wanting to hide the trouble in his mind and heart from her for this very reason. He could only hope to stave off her opportunistic advances until he either found out about his commander, or proved conclusively that he wasn't giving up. He wanted to tell her plainly, but this wasn't the time. It never was. He turned again and waded through the mire that overcame his legs with the onset of heartache always accompanying mention of Shepard.

Fuck it, he was leaving as soon as he could.


	5. Respite and Remorse

Light broke the imposing blackness as an eye opened blearily, drawing Shepard into consciousness with only the gift of his nerves cloaked in pain to welcome him, barely making out the jutting ventilation and smooth arch of the ceiling beyond the sterile light. He dragged a deep breath through his nose and immediately knew by the too clean air what the blurred, hazy shapes meant: he was in a med bay. Where, how, and who was responsible were facts far beyond his grasp at that moment, but he gained a bit of comfort from simply knowing he was aboard a human vessel.

And good gods, he was alive.

Barely an inch of him was free from pain, searing, aching, or otherwise, but each heavy breath he took into lungs surrounded by a still healing ribcage that glowed with agony each time he inhaled reminded him that he had lived through the end of the galaxy. His head swam with watery vertigo and more than a little deja vu. Twice now, for fuck's sake, twice he had woken up like this, in more pain than he cared to admit and with no idea where he was. This time, though, the silence was thick around him. No blaring intercom barking orders at him, no tumultuous eruptions nearby, no emergency alarms, and no fire. Just quiet.

He slowly sat up despite the fractures in the majority of his body demanding him not to and a significant portion of his skin igniting at the slightest movement. Steadying himself, blinking away the delirium, trying to pry cognizance from the fog overlaying the tranquil medical bay around him, Shepard pivoted to set his feet on the cold floor. He had nearly convinced himself to try standing when the wisp of a door opening claimed his attention.

"Have you not seen enough movies to know exactly how this is going to end?" The rich, crisp alto voice belonged to a woman, shorter statured than average, but well built and powerful of both body and persona. Her garb was unmistakably military, explaining the strength in her posture and toned physique, but a few parts of her stood against regulations: tank top in place of an officer's jacket, black hair short on the right and swept to the left in feathered spikes that draped almost to her collar bone at their longest point, touched with bits of blue and purple here and there on the fringe, and a distinct lack of what would be considered proper military mannerism. Her face was smooth and silken, skin touched with a faint pigmentation that suggested perhaps Brazilian origin, though her jaw was surprisingly strong and angular. Most striking were the lavender eyes peering beneath a single crooked brow at the commander, beneath which settled a smirk on delicate lips.

Shepard eyed the woman curiously in her slightly too baggy military pants tucked into a tightly secured pair of boots. She had an assault rifle hanging from a crooked belt across her lower back and an interesting mechanism strapped to her left forearm, and the more he considered her, the more he wondered how she got away with being so loose with the regulations on garb.

"Who are you?" he finally croaked out with a painful breath.

"Captain Erika Liles of the SSV Bethesda," the woman announced with mixed pride and practice. "We're the ones that saved you from the wreckage in London."

Captain. That at least explained some of how the woman carried herself, but Shepard hadn't seen many captains with such a disregard for military convention. His brows furrowed a little, head tilting to accommodate his lacking sight. Missing an eye would take some getting used to.

"London? How did I end up back on Earth?"

"No idea," she shrugged, crossing the distance between them and propping herself on an empty counter top. "We found you in a sweep of the area about three weeks after the Citadel exploded."

"Wait, three weeks? I remember the shuttle landing just after I woke up." Confusion pulled his sight to the silvery floor as he struggled to discern what had actually happened, and when.

"Yeah, three weeks, just about. Commander, estimates say that you hit the ground after at least an eighty meter fall. Your memory isn't going to be great after that."

"How did I make it out of that?"

"Implants. Cybernetics. A bit more luck than I'd like to think anyone has. Honestly, if it wasn't for all of the enhancements and whatnot, and apparently your biotics generating enough of a mass effect field to fry your implant, the doctor says you probably would have been mulch." Erika laughed a bit dryly at that.

"Seems like luck won't be leaving me alone any time soon," quipped the commander, echoing the wry chuckle as he accepted the truth to the captain's previous words, settling himself back into the bed after adjusting the incline to sit up a bit. Erika smiled approvingly.

"Good, we won't have to go through the motions of every generic hospital scene with a badass in it."

"How long have I been down?"

"Over all, counting the time you must have been laying in the rubble, about two months or so. The doctor's kept you under for your sake."

"How bad is it?"

"Well, let's see," she began, stepping to a nearby desk and lifting a datapad, flicking through the information. "Fractures through most of your skeletal system, burns on sixty-eight percent of your body, rounded down, plenty of ruptured blood vessels, lots of nerve damage. Even your spinal cord took some punishment." She flipped through a few more caches of notes dismissively. "Muscles and tendons torn, swelling, blah blah blah... Oh, and you're missing an eye, in case you couldn't tell."

"Yeah, I gathered as much."

Erika dropped the pad to the desk again and made her way to the bed next to Shepard, sitting down with her elbows on her knees, fingers steepled.

"I'm dead serious, commander. The only thing that kept you alive was the sheer amount of work that Cerberus did on you and a biotic field that you probably created reflexively. It stopped you from taking enough damage to put you down while the cybernetics managed to heal you some before they shorted out."

Shepard took a moment, laying his head back against the pillow and staring at the arcing ceiling above him, letting the information settle on his still groggy awareness. He tried to play through the memories of how everything finally ended, but he found large tracts that he couldn't pull together, couldn't pry from the smog of dreamy, disjointed bits any solid series of events. Just pieces that still didn't answer how he had survived when the Citadel shattered. While he wanted to dwell on the questions until he dredged some answer from the mire, he knew full well that he couldn't. It didn't matter. He was alive, he was safe, and he would move on just the same as he always had.

"I'm glad you made it out though," Erika added, filling the silence that had hung longer than anticipated. "Commander Tyran Shepard, the best damn thing the Alliance has ever been responsible for, shouldn't die in a pile of wreckage after saving everyone's asses." At that, the commander slid a curious eye to the woman.

"That's the first time I've heard my name in years," he retorted with a breathy laugh. "Alright, that might be an exaggeration, but I can count the occasions on one hand."

"Military propriety and habit, neither of which I'm fond of."

"I can see that."

"Not as well, I bet."

Tyran shut up at that, scoffing a bit at the young woman, though with enough genuine humor to avoid being misconstrued.

"I'll leave you to rest." Erika rose with that and made for the door at a bit of a saunter. "Feel free to use one of the screens for vids or anything, now that you're awake. Control's beside the bed, and if you need anything, just say so."

"Does anyone know where I am?" Tyran shot after her. Some bit of him wanted her to say yes, but frankly, with the way he felt, he'd would have rather not had anyone know how to get in touch with him. Aside from his crew, he had no interest in dealing with the masses, and he seriously contemplated staying dead to the galaxy and falling into obscurity.

"Not yet. We figured it'd be better to get you put back together before letting anyone know that you're alive. Too many questions, too many people wanting to bother you." At that, Tyran breathed a bit easier. "We'll keep it quiet until you're ready."

"Thanks, captain." A hand raised in a weak salute, something the commander hadn't found himself doing in a long time. Erika cut her eyes at him a little, expression flattening.

"Knock that off."

"You're a superior officer."

"And I said to knock it off. Anyone else, sure, they can salute me until their arm pops out of the socket for all I care, but you're a god damned hero. And frankly, I think the least we can do is drop the rigid nonsense."

Shepard nodded slightly at that and let his hand drop to his lap. The door behind Erika whirred open, a tall young man of Asian descent stepping through the entryway, omni-tool glowing over his right hand. Unlike the captain, he was the image of proper naval attire. He stopped short of running into the woman completely as he lifted his eyes from the omni-tool. Realizing that the commander was awake, he offered the infirm hero a warm smile, though his attention returned to Erika in short order.

"We'll be reaching Arcturus station within ten minutes. We've received signals from at least four asteroids indicating survivors are holding out still."

"Good. Have Thomas get the shuttles ready, and tell Walters, Chandler, and Gibraltar they're taking their teams to extract the survivors as soon as we get to the ruins." The captain turned back to Tyran, taking the new arrival's hand in hers. "This is my husband, Lieutenant Jackie Xia Liang. He's a hell of a navigator and a damn fine soldier, and he has a way of scaring the ever living shit out of the crew. It's funny as hell."

Jackie gave a bit of a nod, which Shepard reciprocated.

"Pleasure to meet you commander. Hopefully you're feeling better?" His tone was soft and a bit quiet, almost uncertain, without being terribly meek.

"I'm not entirely sure how I was feeling before, but from what I hear, this has to be better."

"You took a hell of a beating, that's for sure." The lieutenant's omni-tool faded as he turned his dark eyes back to Erika. "I'll get the teams ready."

"Thanks. I'm heading back to the bridge to keep an eye on things." She turned and inclined her head in a departing farewell to Shepard. "Rest well, commander."

Tyran laid his head back again, eye drifting closed, ready to let sleep claim him once more before a distant echo slipped into his thoughts. An echo from a time before the chaos came to a close, before the madness of the Reapers came to a sudden, crashing halt. Simple words nestled in a gentle, pleasant memory of respite among endless battle. A recollection of a moment shared before a flickering fire in a beautiful apartment.

 _'What would I do without you?'_

 _'You'll never find out."_

"Captain!" he jolted from his recollections. Erika turned on her heel, poking back through the open door.

"Yeah?"

"You haven't happened to hear anything about Major Kaidan Alenko, have you?"

"Kaidan?" She crossed her arms over her chest, eyeing the commander curiously, something lurking in her eyes that seemed to know. "Sure, we hear about him every now and then. Only human Spectre tends to get attention. Why?"

"I'd like to get in in touch with him." Kaidan was alive and well. Of all things weighing on Tyran's shoulders, the greatest had just been lifted, and the worry finally melted away into calm peace that the man he had grown attached to was alright. Erika nodded a bit tentatively.

"He's usually kept pretty busy by the Council. You could use the extranet, but we both know the second anything with your name or identification surfaces, they'll be on it faster than you can blink."

Shepard considered this for a brief moment. As much as he wanted nothing more than to see Kaidan, see those gorgeous eyes and that warm smile, hear that dusky voice promise he'd be alright, knowing that the botic was fine would have to be enough for the moment. They'd see each other again in time.

"Thanks Erika." He nestled back into the bed, clenching his eyes against the pain rippling along his body.

"Of course, Shepard. Let us know if you need anything." The woman departed, the door humming closed behind her, leaving the commander in peaceful silence through which his mind could race at whim. He couldn't pull himself from the mindset he had locked himself into during the war. Every consideration that drifted through the still groggy discord was something to do with the battle, question surmounted by yet another question, each picking apart the integrity of a militant force that he no longer had. He found himself pondering what the mercenaries under Aria's command would do now, how the krogan would handle their species continuing to degrade, whether the turian's would be able to salvage their homeworld from the wreckage.

Inevitably, this brought to his attention the poignant, bitter truth that, at the end of all of this madness, the weight of death on his shoulders could probably kill him. His decisions had wiped out four species, saying nothing of the numerous lives that had touched his before flickering into darkness to pay for his failures. How many had devoted themselves to his lead and died for it? How many that had relied upon him now disappeared into the void because of their foolish thought to follow a mad man on a nihilistic mission? The worst sting of it was the doubt, the question, the regret, begging to know if it could have been done better, if he could have still succeeded without sacrificing so many, and the certainty that he could have managed to prevail with a less devastating price exacted for it.

And most terrifying of all was the coldness that numbed him. The icy grasp from which he could pry no deeper feeling. He rued their loss, but distantly, as if watching a massacre through a screen. He knew those he had lost and scorned the anguish stringently, but the others... He couldn't bring himself to feel anything more for them than he would any other number on a casualty report. They were the price of victory, after all. He accomplished what he had to do.

But, could the cost have been negotiated?

Chased into sleep by such troublesome contemplations, Tyran once again found himself lost in a sea of ghosts, their hunger for penance staining his dreams, the hissing whispers of doubt speaking the dreadful truth infinitely: his success was one bought with more blood than it should have been. In those dark moments, he knew he would never escape the haunting geist of that fact.


	6. In the Shadows of Lost Moments

A dozen screens clad the plain metal wall of the large personal chambers, cables snaking across the floor like hungering roots of synthetic trees, and three consoles buzzed slightly in the corners of the room, their panels connected by vines of wires and cords to the larger mainframes. The lights were dim, and of the myriad screens adorning the wall, only four remained active and glowing. The rest were black and lifeless, looming as if in somber memory before the asari, whose fingers danced over the glowing keys before her, commanding the files within the cold sarcophagus to unfold before her. For the past few months, her life had consisted of little more than trying to manage what information she still possessed, maintain connections with her dwindling contacts, and hopefully pull out of this mess with something on the other side to show for it. More importantly, there was cleanup to tend to across the stars, and what she had she intended to use to pull the survivors together.

Gloved fingers stopped tapping along the keypad for a moment as bright blue eyes lifted to the screens before her. One flooded with the files she had beckoned, and within an instant, she knew they had been corrupted and warped. She swiped the image away and queued it for salvage. In line behind the other few hundred, eventually she would have whatever intel she could pull from the corruption, and everything that lingered would be deleted. She leaned back and took a deep breath, rubbing her brow as she tried to decide where to turn next. There was so much to decrypt, organize, and recover, she was going to have to put it off to be of any real use to anyone.

Her finger tapped a button on the only keyboard she had, bringing her mail up on the screen accompanying it. It's not like she expected much, but it was a welcome distraction, sifting through the twenty or so extranet mails she usually found there. Half of them the true recipients didn't even know she had. They all contained some fairly useful bit of information, each tagged to be filed later, but nothing of any immediate intrigue to the asari. As she skimmed over the contents of yet another Eclipse communication, the door to her chamber hummed open.

"Hey Liara," came the weary voice of the captain as he made his way into the chamber.

"Good evening, captain." She swiveled in her chair to fully view the Spectre, and as she had anticipated, his eyes looked almost sunken with how exhausted he was, and his skin was notably paler than usual. A cloud hung about him, and the asari knew well what that meant. "Counsellor Halldorsen hasn't let up, has she?"

"Not even a little," Kaidan huffed out with a weak chuckle. "I swear, if it wasn't for me, she'd probably have a breakdown."

"Or she would find another human to dump her concerns on," Liara quipped bitterly. Kaidan's brow furrowed at her.

"C'mon Liara, she might lean on us a lot more than she should, but she's doing the best she can with what she's been handed."

"If you insist. Are we heading out soon?"

"Yeah, we've got a stop to make at Europa before we start toward Sur'kesh." Judging from his tone, Kaidan was none to excited about the prospect.

"We're going to handle the Cerberus members from Nepheron?" her voice inflected curiously. While she had thought perhaps they would be called on to deal with the refugees, she had concluded that the situation on Sur'kesh was far more dire, while a few war criminals would best be handled by the Alliance.

"Seems that way. I figure it's basically en route to Sur'kesh anyway, we might as well stop and take care of it."

"Things are rarely so simple and straightforward when it comes to the Normandy." Liara's cerulean orbs focused on Kaidan with stringent austerity, which made the captain stop for a moment. "Should we be risking a potential confrontation with Sur'kesh in the condition it is?"

"Considering that the salarians already have most of their forces on planet to handle the fallout, I think we can deal with this, even if the refugees turn out to be some kind of ambush." The asari regarded Kaidan tentatively for a moment before her expression softened a little.

"You're sounding almost as detached as the rest of the Council." The Spectre fixed Liara with a testy furrow of his brows.

"Now what's that supposed to mean?"

"You've noticed as well as I have, Kaidan," she began quietly, calmly, almost in mournful reverence. "The Council is fracturing. The asari, the salarians, the turians, and the humans are all separating to focus on themselves. Everyone is too concerned with their own problems to offer each other help." With a gesture she brought a particular series of files up, though in their disheveled plenty, Kaidan couldn't make out any details. "I've been watching the communications as much as I can, and the one constant I see is that everyone is putting themselves first, sometimes to the pointed detriment of the others."

"You know it's not like that." Kaidan was almost offended at Liara's insinuation, which played into the timbre of his voice quite plainly. He couldn't, however, argue an observation he had made on a number of occasions.

"No, I don't think it is yet, I simply don't want to lose sight of what held us all together."

"We won't." Finally, Kaidan's voice returned to a more normalized tone, relaxing after the brief moment of aggitation. He had to make himself remember who he was talking to, which of itself was proof that the words were never meant as a jab. "Anything else interesting come up?"

"No, not really," Liara resigned the debate to an uneasy conclusion at the captain's change of topic. "Aria's mercnaries are moving a great deal, but I can't figure out why, exactly. They don't seem to be causing anyone any trouble though." She motioned the deluge of information off of the screen, leaving the gentle twist of ethereal visualizations. "Besides that, nothing." Kaidan nodded agreeably.

"Alright, thanks Liara. I should go."

At that, the asari smiled a wide, bright smile, simultaneously taunting and pleasant. Kaidan's face grew entirely befuddled, which only made the woman laugh delicately.

"What?" he plucked.

"Nothing." Liara shook her head gently at that, swiveling to fully face her screens once more, ushering them to glowing life once more. "You just sound like him. I've noticed it more and more lately." It took him a moment, but the Spectre eventually caught on, and his expression dulled into a plaintive resignation.

"Maybe it comes with the job description or something. I don't know." Liara cast a consoling glance at him with that.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of, captain. He had a powerful effect on all of us. I think he touched us more than we ever really knew, to be honest. And, considering your relationship with our commander, it's to be expected." Kaidan thought over the woman's words for a moment, his eyes averting to the grid of black screens at his right.

"I miss him like hell. There's not much more that I want in this galaxy than to find him and have him back at my side, but..." His words trailed into a pause, growing cold as they returned. "There's work to be done. If he taught me anything, it's to keep to the job and get it done, anything else be damned."

"Yes, we all know how dedicated he could be. Sometimes a little too dedicated, though. Almost ruthless. We'll get it done, captain, but perhaps with a bit less ferocity." She smiled warmly at him. "I believe in you."

"Thanks, Liara." His features warmed faintly with that as he turned and made for the door. "Let me know if anything else comes up."

"Of course." The door whirred shut and left the Shadow Broker in silence and dim luminescence. She pulled up an extranet mail that she had come across earlier and read through it again, scrutinizing it for unseen detail. She hadn't believed it when the missive first crossed her screen, but each time she read it, she felt a bit more compelled to accept its truth, though it felt off nonetheless. Something just wasn't right about it, even if she couldn't pin down precisely what. The point was clear though.

Shepard's body was found.

The message passed between a pair of volus, followed by an offer to Barla Von himself that the banker hadn't yet responded to. Supposedly it had been shipped off world to a privately leased lab on Noveria under the name Gura. She had started trying to dig into the Noveria Development Corporation logs to learn more, but it was a difficult task with the state of things, leaving her with only snips of information. She had wanted to tell Kaidan, but the moment she saw how miserable and exhausted he was, her words caught in her throat. How could she heap the anguish of knowing that Shepard was found dead on his already crumbling shoulders, especially without having enough information to know precisely how valid the claim was? No, there would be a time, when she had learned enough to know the truth of the matter, to tell the captain. Until then, she had to find a way to get eyes into the lab on the cold, desolate wasteland of a planet.

She quickly brought up a communications program, adjusting the levels on the voice modulation software as she tried to find the right route of still functioning comm buoys to relay through, and taking a second to ensure the proper layers of encryption and divert any trackers through an endless loop in the communications network. Fortunately, the chaos saturating the aftermath of the war worked in her favor as much as against her, adding yet another level of security. When the contact finally established, Liara leaned in, speaking quietly.

"Gianna, I need you to look into something..."

The elevator door slid open into the plain vestibule, Kaidan entering as he undid the straps of his jacket and worked the zipper down. The door to the captain's cabin hissed open, inviting the biotic into the soft glow of dim lights, the left wall radiating vibrant blue from the aquarium teeming with life. He tossed his jacket into a heap on the chair set askew before his personal terminal. As always, the green light was blinking, a sharp, stabbing reminder that his work would never be done, a ping to keep dragging him back into the mess that was the galaxy. He didn't spare it a thought this time, though, cuing the lights even lower with a swipe of his hand as he entered the bathroom.

After a shower meant as much to brood on his thoughts as to bathe, he descended into the main part of the cabin, settling on the angular couch claiming the corner at the foot of the bed, head in his hands, elbows on his knees. The migraine had barely subsided since he got off of the Covenant, and there was little else he wanted but to sleep. The thoughts, though, chewed at the back of his head incessantly, concerns about Sur'kesh, about Europa, about Jessica. Worries that before they had the chance to piece everything back together, the Council would have torn itself apart, divided into conflicting species vying to pull themselves from the wreckage, even if it meant clawing up the spines of the others. Atop this nestled the ever pervasive stress of being the target of xenophobic scorn for being the only human Spectre, which meant heaps extra dropping onto him to prove his ability while at the same time being trusted to fail, and admonished when he did.

And over all, the ever resounding doubt that he would ever see Tyran again played a haunting, discordant cacophony in the backdrop. He'd push them back with every waking moment he had to dedicate to doing his duty, but in these quiet moments alone, they were all he could hear. They spoke horrible truths to him: that the commander had been slaughtered, that he burned to death with the rest of the Citadel, that he would never again spend another moment with the man he loved. He sunk into memories of their times together on the Citadel, of the moment at the cafe when they finally spoke what had been kept silent for years, the calm nights spent together in the apartment, the precious few days they let themselves put the madness aside to wander the Presidium, and the party that had brought them all together in a moment of bonding, adoring camaraderie. He remembered waking up next to the commander time and again, cherishing the look of astral, dreamlike tranquility that so rarely graced the pale features of the man that saved them all. He remembered the smile that he saw far too rarely, that he had promised he would nourish.

His eyes averted to a picture on the table before him, settled beside the commander's old N7 helmet. It was a simple image of the two of them together at the Relay Monument, casual dress, arm in arm, looking for once in their careers like two normal people. Both smiling. He lifted the frame and stared into the rich emerald eyes of his lover, feeling an echo of that happiness again before it melted into bitter pain, a stinging rebuttal that he'd never get the chance to know a normal life with the man, if at all. His vision clouded as tears gently trickled free, the stone walls that held him aloft and kept him strong crumbling around him. He set the picture back on the table and slumped to the side, laying his head on his crooked arm, staring through the moisture at that long distant recollection.

All he had wanted was to give Tyran some semblance of a good life, be a partner to him, put the military behind them and live out what was left of their lives in woefully pedestrian bliss. They hadn't talked much of the commander's past, but he felt, somewhere deep within him, that it had seldom been free of strife. Shepard was a man etched with the scars of his history. Kaidan wanted to know the details that he could never quite glean, but more than that, he had wanted to sculpt a better future for the both of them. One that could finally bring about the dawn from an otherwise twilight existence.

Now, it would never happen. All of the bright, romantic hopes were buried with the commander's broken body somewhere in the rubble, lost and alone in the dark. The comprehension of that jabbed Kaidan painfully in the chest, carrying him into tormented sleep with ragged, forlorn sobs in a quiet room, painted in thick reminiscence of Shepard's leadership.


	7. A Quiet End

The cell was lonely, quiet, with sturdy walls to keep Garrus locked away with echoes of his troublesome thoughts until the first leg of the journey could be completed. It wasn't anything spectacular. Just a small outpost on a rocky planet he hadn't heard anything remarkable about, a layover of sorts to refuel and renew the eezo core on the schooner, ensure the discharge mechanisms weren't in danger of frying, and various other bits of maintenance to get them through the long expanses of space that used to take only hours. The trip was expected to take the better part of a three months, if he recalled correctly, and he certainly wasn't looking forward to spending that kind of time on a cramped prison ship. He was glad to be the only incarcerated individual aboard at the moment. It afforded him a bit more leniency with containment procedure than would perhaps be excusable with the eight cells full; he was given longer periods out of his chamber than would be plausible with more, and certainly the air in the ship wasn't thick with tension and contained aggression.

Chellick spent more time than usual with him as well. Mostly, they exchanged war stories with one another, Garrus taking more than a little pleasure embellishing the tale behind his scars, rather purposefully avoiding the awkward discomfort of addressing the details of the charges brought against the renegade. They each had their side, and with little doubt, an argument would erupt between them every time. Best not to ruin a peaceful trip.

As the trek carried on, though, Garrus found Chellick's visits growing infrequent, which alerted the turian immediately that, when the Executor entered the cell with acerbity on his raptor features after their long voyage had drawn to a close, the friendly passing of time had come to an abrupt end. Chellick sat across from Garrus at the table, stiffened by the demand of his position, datapad at the ready and glowing.

"We're nearing Kailo," he began, stoic and solid, camouflaged beneath the exterior demanded of him. "There, you will be transferred to a larger vessel that will continue to the Covenant, where your sentence will be processed." He traced a talon over the radiant pad in his hand.

"Covenant?" Garrus chimed curiously.

"With the Citadel in complete ruin, an asari dreadnought has been repurposed to serve as a base of operations for the council." An amused touch infiltrated his even tone. "In orbit around Earth, of all places."

"And you're not coming?"

"I have other matters that demand my attention, and far too little time to tend them. That's why I'm here now." Reluctance played into Chellick's tone at that point. "I need to hear your side of this before I can forward you on."

"Pass me off and be done with me, you mean." Garrus' words had a bite to them that the Executor was none too happy about, his eyes narrowing.

"If that's how you'd prefer to view it, fine, but that doesn't change anything." With that, he dropped the datapad to the cold table and scooted it to the side, folding his taloned fingers before him. "So tell me why, Garrus."

"As if you haven't already made your decision?" Spite filtered into his voice at that, harsh and acrid. "Why bother with this? I'm a deserter to you, and nothing I say is going to fix that. We both know it."

"That's not how this works. I can't toss you in a cell on a whim, and while, yes, I am the head of C-sec now, the choice isn't entirely in my hands."

"So I get a trial? How generous of you, but is there really any reason for it?"

"Because I'm not going to throw you in prison to rot without a fair chance," Chellick's voice raised, tension starting to bubble over a bit. Agitation at the renegade's unvoiced accusation that he would so hastily make an executive move on a matter like this was starting to pry at him more. He reclaimed a touch of his composure, bringing his voice back down to a more reasonable volume. "Now if you want my report to contain anything worthwhile to keeping you out of a cell, I'd appreciate if you would stop trying to shoot down my chance to put it together, and stop acting like I don't give a damn about you." That made Garrus stop for a second. With a sigh, he nodded, conceding.

"Alright Executor." He took a moment to gather his thoughts together. "I never meant to abandon my position, you know that." To that, Chellick nodded, tapping away at the glowing pad. "But, tracking down Saren was a lot more important to me than waiting two weeks for processing, so yes, I suppose I did leave too quickly."

"This is Shepard's fault, then?" Chellick's voice didn't betray any personal opinion one way or another, leaving only room for clarification.

"No. I made my choice, not him," Garrus retorted defensively.

"If he would have waited -"

"We couldn't wait. Saren was busy lining up Geth to follow him, and at the time, we had no idea why. We had to move immediately." A pause, and a reluctant sigh, preluded a defeated admission from the renegade. "I acted too brashly. I ignored orders. It turned out to be for the greater good, but that isn't enough, is it?"

Chellick diligently took notes and said nothing. The silence fell heavily for a moment before he finally spoke.

"And afterward?"

"That I have to put on you, Executor." Garrus' tone took a more relaxed turn at that. "Perhaps when there's a threat of desertion charges, a pleasant invitation back isn't the way to go." The Executor nodded with a clucked laugh.

"I thought I would get you back before charges were officially filed. Didn't expect you to disappear off to Omega and play vigilante."

"Then you don't know me very well." Chellick grunted at that, huffing slightly before quietly adding the new input.

"I suppose that responsibility sits squarely on my shoulders, then."

"I have to agree." Garrus reclined slightly, stretching his legs beneath the table and settling his hands in his lap. "Any reason you didn't bring any of this up? We were on the Citadel constantly during the ordeal with the Collectors."

"Because," Chellick began with a sigh, "what you were doing was more important. When I could get to you, you were busy with real issues, and when you weren't helping to save every last one of us, I couldn't find you."

"Then I was doing my job well," Garrus mused with a touch of pride in his tone.

"After the Collectors and Cerberus were deal with?" Chellick pressed.

"What can I say?" Garrus posited, shrugging ever so slightly. "Everything piled on one after another. What we learned when dealing with the Collectors showed us the real threat at hand, and we saw it through to the end. I wasn't about to leave the Normandy to that fight alone."

"Did it ever once occur to you to return to C-Sec?"

"Honestly, no, it didn't. I had bigger things on my mind." The exchange between them had grown intense, their voices rising and bristling at one another with each new word they spoke. The Executor sighed slightly, though his words were cut off before he could say anything. "It was too late by then anyway. Maybe somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that, and I have little doubt you would have pulled me away from our mission before it was done if I had."

"Is that why I put this conversation off for so long?" Chellick's tone softened in an attempt to reveal to Garrus just how far he had gone to avoid dumping this mess onto his shoulders until the Reaper threat was handled. The renegade, try as he might, couldn't really offer a debate. Chellick tapped at the datapad for a moment longer and stood, turning the device off with a buzz and a blip.

"I'm going to be pulling for you,Garrus, whether you believe I'm on your side or not. I don't care that you were gone. What you pulled off with the Normandy meant too much for me to hold a grudge that you left." Garrus didn't offer anything in return, knowing full well there was no point at all. Chellick tarried for just a moment longer before he turned to leave.

"Thanks," Garrus sighed after him. Left alone in the room to brood on his thoughts, Garrus couldn't bring himself beyond the sudden onset of hopelessness. This was really it. After everything, he'd have to face punishment for desertion, which he knew could mean a long time in a cell. As much as it bothered him that he wouldn't be able to help the rebuilding efforts throughout the galaxy, he grew selfish in those stewing moments. How could this be the way it ends for him? How could he really go out with a quiet little whimper after the magnanimous hell he had gone through for all of them? Didn't he deserve more?

The vast quiet of space that pressed on the room, with little cacophony from the machinery of the ship to break the stillness, seemed heavy to him in that moment. No matter how much he accomplished, in the greater scheme of things, he was nothing but a runaway, a renegade, a rebel that could never earn the right to be treated as anything more. He heaved a sigh in the quietness that echoed slightly off of the stoic walls. He had never, in his life, felt more alone than at that moment.


End file.
